Wouldn't putting the code in public domain be doing the same thing? If I put my code in public domain and a company decides to use it after that, would that not be illegal? Nope, anyone can do whatever they want with public domain stuff. It's utterly and completely unencumbered.
Even GPLed code is subject to copyright law's fair use provisions. Sorry, cutting and pasting GPL code and sticking it in a project in a publicly accessible CVS under the BSD license is not "fair use".
As far as I understand, a copyright on the code will not prevent anyone from looking at it, and using the ideas in the code to write closed-source drivers. He would need to get a patent to protect from that possibility. Well yeah, but that's not what they did. They cut and pasted code, which is a copyright issue. As GPL bashing whiners have to frequently be reminded, they are free to write their own code that does the same thing, even using the GPL code as a technical guideline. But if you want to use GPL code, you have to obey the GPL.
What's really funny about all this is that Slashdot is all about advocating piracy under the guise of some anti-RIAA movement (when it's really just fucking over artists), but heaven forbid someone use GPL code. I mean, EULA aren't legally binding, but a GPL text header is? The double standards seem rather self-serving. I could swear this has already been explained ad nauseum here on Slashdot. Being anti-copyright and being pro-GPL are not mutually exclusive. The GPL is actually a way of turning the regime of copyright against itself. By releasing valuable copyrighted code under a license that basically negates the primary profit mechanism behind copyrights (the monopoly on copying), the system itself is subverted. Your argument shows a complete lack of understanding of the principle motivation behind the GPL. It's an attack on copyright.
I really hope the GPL gets tried in court because of this and subsequently fails. Miserably. Man, you sure are stupid. The GPL is a license. How can it "fail"? You either accept the terms and distribute the source code... or you don't, and have to write all your own code. What's so fucking hard about that? Morons like you who think that "free as in beer" should automatically mean it's Public Domain just don't get it. But then again, you're all fucktards, so why should that be surprising?
Seems one offish and anecdotal to me. An example doesn't prove it to be the norm. No, but it sure demonstrates that complex, quality results can be achieved by someone with skill. You clearly implied via analogy that without quality specs nothing could be achieved that wasn't a) simple, or b) the result of luck. Of course, the very idea of b) is idiotic on its face. Good code doesn't happen because you're "lucky". It happens because you know what you're doing.
He never said anything about a public cvs. Password protecting your warez ftp site doesn't make it not distribution. Likewise, committing code to private CVS is only not distribution of you don't give anyone the password. The first time a person downloads, public or not , that's distribution.
RIAA is primarily: EMI, Sony/BMG, Universal, and Warner
MPAA is primarily: Disney, Sony, Paramount/Viacom, Fox, Universal, and Warner
So, we're not talking about some evil rogue organization that wants to legalize their fraudulent activities.. We're talking about large, well known companies, which would think twice about their means if they started to get bad press. I think we all know who the members of the RIAA/MPAA are. When's the last time you heard anyone say anything nice about any of those guys?
** I'm not supporting piracy here. They have the right to protect their property Copyright is not a property right. They do not own those songs/books/records/movies, we do, all of us. Those things are artifacts of our common culture. We have granted them a limited monopoly on copying, and nothing more. At some point, their lobbying to extend this limited monopoly into perpetuity ought to call into question their right to exercise this monopoly at all. I leave at as an exercise to the reader whether that point has been reached yet.
Currently, if they did so, the easiest case someone could make would be to say "well, THEY made those files available on a P2P network, they should have known someone would download them" or it could go so far as "that was entrapment" Entrapment only applies to law enforcement.
Pretexting is the practice of pretending to be someone else in order to obtain personal information on a person
Is it appropriate for government to have a Department of Sock-Puppetism? This rings a lot of alarm bells and there's probably something about this in the constitution already. No, you don't seem to understand what the US constitution is. The constitution is an enumeration of the limited powers of the federal government, and nothing else. Pretexting is essentially a form of fraud, which is generally covered by state laws.
Teaching is not a career path we want avoided by smart people. Unfortunately, there's nothing you can do about that. Teaching in public schools is a government job. Government jobs are rife with bureaucracy and the pay is usually decent, but uninspiring. Creativity is definitely not rewarded. Heck, nothing is rewarded--- the worst teacher earns exactly the same as the best. Government is too prone to corruption to even consider any sort of "merit pay" system. It's just not the kind of job smart people tend to go for.
As for the first claim, if you think that the "best and brightest" are cheaper to educate to their full potential than the "worst and dumbest," then I pray you never have a job in education. It's not that one is cheaper than the other, it's that the discipline problems inherent to public schools drag everyone down by wasting time and attention. Plenty of time to teach the good kids (be they smart or dumb) if you can simply tell the bad ones "you're outta' here". Can't do that in a public school.
What are you basing your assertion that lower class size == better result? The "class size" theory in US public schools is entirely based on discipline, not any direct relationship between the number of students and how well they learn. My mother teaches algebra to 8th graders (or tries to, anyway). According to her, most teachers are poor disciplinarians. Combine that with children who have essentially been left to raise themselves by disinterested parents, and you have a recipe for chaos. Orderly, hyper-polite, conformist Japanese children can learn in a class of fifty kids? Holy shit, what a fucking surprise! Is it really any surprise that in this age of mandatory mainstreaming that the classrooms are madhouses? Imagine a class where three kids are mildly autistic, eight are chronic discipline problems (who can't be kicked out), and 5 are just not ready to learn algebra at age 13. How easy is it going to be to teach the remaining 15 who are ready to learn? When classes reach a certain size, the number of "troublemakers" reaches the point where most of the class time is spent reining them in.
I don't live in Michigan, so I don't know if this would work, but here is my idea.
Implementing local sales taxes might create problems since the system is not set up to deal with that. However, what they can do is, if not already, create additional state sales tax rates.
Certain businesses would have a higher sales tax rate depending on the type of business.
Why? What possible justification is there for implementing a byzantine variable sales tax based on the type of business?
Perhaps superstores (like Wal-Mart) be subject to an addition 1 cent/dollar sales tax. Prices are low enough already, so this wouldn't be a big deal. Ah, they old misguided "they can afford it" reasoning. People don't always shop at Wal-Mart because they're cheapskates. Many people shop there because they have very little money. So essentially what you're proposing is a 1% tax on being poor. Way to go.
Restaurants would be subject to an addition 0.5 cent/dollar sales tax. Because only rich folks eat at restaurants. Especially fast food joints.
Restaurant deliveries would be subject to an addition 0.7 cent/dollar sales tax (on top of the above). Because only rich folks have pizzas delivered. Seriously, are you trying to drive every little chinese food and pizza shop out of business, leaving only Dominoes?
Etc. "Etc.", in other words "keep adding random taxes onto random businesses until we've either made up the deficit, or driven every last small business out of the state." You should run for state legislature. You'd fit right in.
I don't see how this is saying Bush sucks. It blamed congress for the change in Daylight savings time, and last I checked, congress is run by the Democrats. Well, to be fair, it was still a Republican congress when the change was passed as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005; but either way it doesn't fuckin' matter. It would have passed now too, were it included in a Democrat sponsored energy bill. They're all idiots, each and every one of them. Not the stupid kind of idiots, but the much more dangerous smart kind of idiots who know they're participating in a farce. The problem with government nowadays is that the kind of person who can get elected to office is exactly the sort of person you don't want in office. I say burn the place down and start over.
Characters die for reasons other than driving the plot forward, like in real life. Yeah, but it's a movie, not real life. Killing characters at random for no plot-relevant reason is stupid. It goes against the entire purpose of narrative fiction. On the one hand you have the crew (well, River, anyway) singlehandedly killing off the hordes of reavers, a classic unrealistic Against All Odds type situation people expect from movies; but then you have the decidedly random killing of Wash just before, almost like Joss was desperate to prove he wasn't following traditional formula--- which was dumb because he was following traditional formula! Traditional formula is what makes a story good. It's what we, as human beings living in a random world, crave.
VW also produce a 3 litre car, the Lupo. The fuel consummation here is 78 miles per US gallon or 94 miles per Imperial gallon and this car is in productionWas in production. 2005 was the last year they made the Lupo.
I would like to have an electric car, but I live in an apartment: where will I charge it? I'm not going to hang out at a "gas station" for an hour while my car charges. Oh, you'll go to the "battery swap" station, where they'll take your 500lb dead battery pack and swap it for a fully charged one (with a forklift?). After all there's so much extra room in the city to build warehouse-sized facilities to store and swap all those charging battery packs!
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The classic example of that was the Kremer Prize for human-powered flight, won in 1977. Once that was done, interest in human-powered flight
declined substantially. That effort didn't usher in an era of recreational pedal-powered flying. Well, the problem there is that human-powered flight is an utterly ridiculous idea. The only reason to pursue it at all was the challenge of winning the prize. It's not like any Joe Schmoe could buy a Gossamer Albatross Mk I and go for pleasure flights on Sundays. You practically need to be Lance Armstrong to keep one of those in the air for any length of time. No, those who want to fly dangerous contraptions for fun do what they always have: hang gliders and ultralights. Much better, because when you crash you don't die tired.
f it's an algorithm, it's been firmly established legally that it is patentable. Thing is, it's not any particular algorithm. It's overly broad. You can't patent an overly general description of an algorithm, e.g. "a mathematical computation that takes in an integer and returns one or more integers as output". I think translating one of any number of languages into another, even a specific target language like JS, is overly broad.
But in the U.S. online gambling is illegal. Who says? In 2001 the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the Wire Act applies only to sports betting and not other types of online gambling. There exists no other claimed prohibition against online gambling.
You do realize that most places allow you to produce a certain amount of beer/wine/whiskey/whatever tax free for your own consumption, right? Do you realize that if they catch you producing any distilled liquor, you're going to jail? Beer and wine, yes. Distilled spirits? No. And the limits on the former being about "personal consumption" are there to protect taxation.
Slashdot Mirror
MPAA is primarily: Disney, Sony, Paramount/Viacom, Fox, Universal, and Warner
So, we're not talking about some evil rogue organization that wants to legalize their fraudulent activities.. We're talking about large, well known companies, which would think twice about their means if they started to get bad press. I think we all know who the members of the RIAA/MPAA are. When's the last time you heard anyone say anything nice about any of those guys?
** I'm not supporting piracy here. They have the right to protect their property Copyright is not a property right. They do not own those songs/books/records/movies, we do, all of us. Those things are artifacts of our common culture. We have granted them a limited monopoly on copying, and nothing more. At some point, their lobbying to extend this limited monopoly into perpetuity ought to call into question their right to exercise this monopoly at all. I leave at as an exercise to the reader whether that point has been reached yet.
Well, exactly. For a mere $45, you too can receive a License to Pretext.
Is it appropriate for government to have a Department of Sock-Puppetism? This rings a lot of alarm bells and there's probably something about this in the constitution already. No, you don't seem to understand what the US constitution is. The constitution is an enumeration of the limited powers of the federal government, and nothing else. Pretexting is essentially a form of fraud, which is generally covered by state laws.
Implementing local sales taxes might create problems since the system is not set up to deal with that. However, what they can do is, if not already, create additional state sales tax rates.
Certain businesses would have a higher sales tax rate depending on the type of business.
Why? What possible justification is there for implementing a byzantine variable sales tax based on the type of business?
Perhaps superstores (like Wal-Mart) be subject to an addition 1 cent/dollar sales tax. Prices are low enough already, so this wouldn't be a big deal. Ah, they old misguided "they can afford it" reasoning. People don't always shop at Wal-Mart because they're cheapskates. Many people shop there because they have very little money. So essentially what you're proposing is a 1% tax on being poor. Way to go.
Restaurants would be subject to an addition 0.5 cent/dollar sales tax. Because only rich folks eat at restaurants. Especially fast food joints.
Restaurant deliveries would be subject to an addition 0.7 cent/dollar sales tax (on top of the above). Because only rich folks have pizzas delivered. Seriously, are you trying to drive every little chinese food and pizza shop out of business, leaving only Dominoes?
Etc. "Etc.", in other words "keep adding random taxes onto random businesses until we've either made up the deficit, or driven every last small business out of the state." You should run for state legislature. You'd fit right in.
You can always tell people who don't read much. They spell things the way they hear them in conversation.
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